Monthly Archives: February 2010

Reducing Costs on GIS-Based Asset Management

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As much as I’d like to tell you about a free software package that will solve your problems, the reality is you are likely to come across some expenses – no matter how you slice it. The key is to minimize the expenses and find a software package that works for your individual needs.

Expenses you’ll likely encounter include:

  1. Asset Management Licenses (Elements, Cartegraph, Cityworks, etc.)
  2. Desktop GIS Licenses (ESRI, MapInfo, Manifold, etc.)
  3. GIS Web Publishing Licenses for Web Access (ArcSDE, Oracle Spatial, etc.)
  4. Software Maintenance Fees (for all licenses above)
  5. Database Licenses (SQL, Oracle, etc.)
  6. Learning Curve (staff labor to learn the software)
  7. Training Expenses (paying for training)
  8. Hardware Expenses (computers, servers, etc.)
  9. Staff Expenses (to input data)
  10. IT Labor (to maintain the system)

The good news is you can drastically reduce each of the above mentioned costs by wisely selecting a GIS-based management package.

For example – there are a handful of GIS-based asset management packages out there (including Elements Management Software) that don’t require GIS licenses.

Publishing asset management data over the web does not have to be expensive either. Products like Elements Internet Server allow real-time access (via the web) to GIS and asset management data for a fraction of what many GIS server technologies cost.

Additionally, here are a few more ways to reduce costs:

  1. Reduce database licensing costs by selecting an application that runs on SQL Express, or any other free database program.
  2. Save money on training by selecting software that is not overly-complicated. After all, bells and whistles are cool – but not if they make the software too complicated to use.
  3. Reduce IT costs and hardware expenses by selecting an off-site or hosted solution.

Do you have ideas on how to reduce costs? We’d love to hear them!

GIS, Work Orders, and Asset Management

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First, a few thoughts on GIS in general.
In the United States, the words GIS and ESRI are often times used in the same sentence. Why? Because according to Wikipedia, ESRI products (particularly ArcGIS Desktop) have one-third of the global market share, and are used by nearly 80 percent of GIS users worldwide from all professions.

However, GIS and ESRI are not the same thing. ESRI provides GIS software, and there are multiple other vendors who do the same (MapInfo, TatukGIS, and Manifold to name a few). While we are huge fans of ESRI, we are also huge fans of other GIS vendors and applications for various reasons.

With that in mind, we have built Elements Management Software to be 100% compatible not only with ESRI products, but with other GIS applications as well.

Part of our thinking is that not everybody uses ESRI – a lot of people do, but some don’t. The other part of our thinking is that some day you may want to (gulp) switch from your existing GIS software to something else. I know, it’s a stretch – not likely, right? Well the good news is it really doesn’t matter to us what you use for your GIS – whatever it is you use, Elements will work for you.

Another reason we did not build Elements exclusively on one particular GIS platform, is because we’ve seen a lot of problems with asset management (and other) vendors trying to keep their software up to par with the GIS vendors. For example – let’s say we were built exclusively on “Platform A“ when “Platform A” makes a change we have to make that change in our software, like it or not. And that ultimately means that “Platform A” is now controlling our software – which is a strange concept to think about.

On Asset Management
I wish I could count how many times I’ve asked a municipal authority if they had some sort of asset management in place and their answer was “Yes, we’ve already got that – it’s uhh.. Arc-something”
“ESRI you mean? For your GIS?”
“Yes, that’s it!”

Earlier in this post I mentioned that GIS is not ESRI. Well GIS is not asset management either. Although GIS helps with asset management, and we use GIS together with asset management data, GIS in and of itself is not asset management. GIS specifically relates to geographic information. Asset management consists detailed information such as repair history, work orders, maintenance schedules, inventory control, asset lifecycle evaluation, cost information, and much more. The key is to combine your GIS data with a solid asset management package for a powerful combination of GIS-centric asset management.

In conclusion, a few thoughts on work orders.
A common data management method we’ve found among smaller utilities and municipalities is the good old “write it, stack it, can it” method. What’s that? That’s when you write something down on a sticky note or napkin, put it in a stack on the desk, and when the stack gets big enough, you move it to the can.

Another common practice is to use spreadsheets and Microsoft Word to keep track of work history information. While this is certainly a step up from the “write it, stack it, can it” method, there is still room for improvement.

After all – with Microsoft Excel, Google Docs, Open Office, and everything else that’s out there you should be able to come up with something to manage your work orders at pretty much no cost, right? The short answer is yes, you can probably use some combination of these programs to come up with something that will appear to do the job. The question is, when you need to find work orders that relate to a specific asset (a section of pipe, or valve, for example) will you find yourself searching through folders, opening and closing spreadsheets trying to find what you’re looking for? Or when you need to determine the expected lifecycle of an asset (based on repair history) can you do it? When you need to see the locations of all work orders that were completed last year, can you find the data?

The fact is you can light your house with candles and cook with a brick oven if you don’t want to pay your utility bill, but I’d rather pay the bill and use a light switch!